Bringing products to life through stunning photography and animations with GoPro

This FF episode was sponsored by emfluence. Get paired with a marketer to see how your strategy will work in the emfluence Marketing Platform.

📋 TL;DR key takeaways from this episode:

1. Lead into the email with a crisp photo to showcase product characteristics.

2. Keep the CTAs focused, and run a split test to try serving up different promotions. Target one deal in Email A. Run two deals in Email B. Keep an eye on which email performs best and see what you learn.

3. Balance the CTAs and product photography. If you’re showcasing a variety of products, spotlight the main CTA at the top of the email, and make the rest of the CTAs secondary.

*BONUS*: Underline text CTAs. Make it clear that they’re links, or change up the verbiage so each CTA is different. See if that helps drive sales.

Matthew Smith: Hey, it's Feedback Friday, everybody. I hope everyone's having a fantastic finish to your week and ready for another good episode. Today, we will jump in, and I've got Kelly on our team who will join me in doing some review of some fantastic email. Kelly, Thanks for joining me. This is fun to have you.

Kelly Lamano: Thanks, Matthew. It's fun to be here.

Matthew Smith: This is GoPro, a company no one has ever heard of, but you know, just kidding. I would love to hear what's doing it for you. What works well in this initial GoPro email?

Kelly Lamano: I love the animation. The background jumps out to me. Since it's a Black Friday email, I think it's important to grab the reader's attention and do something that's like, wow.

Having the deal flash in the background is cool. I love that product shot. I think it's clean. It's crisp. It takes an inanimate object and makes it something that's like in motion. So I think that that's a cool feature.

Matthew Smith: One of the things I think that's working well here is this email's simplicity. They're just getting out of the way. Get the jump on Black Friday. Boom. Get right in front of people. They use a clear heading and get that shop now, moving. Get you right into the visuals to see what you want to create. This sort of deal graphic is a little bit new, I think, for GoPro. I haven't seen it before, but I think that just showing off the product shot makes for a nice image. What, if anything, would you add or change about this email? 

Kelly Lamano: I like how they have the "Shop now" CTA at the top. It's very focused and simple. One thing that I would update is to have maybe one more CTA button at the end. Once you finish scrolling through, I think it's more valuable to bring the reader back to the website rather than the social media. You want to drive them towards that product or drive towards that sale. So I would like to see one more CTA button at the bottom.

Matthew Smith: Yeah, I agree. I thought the same thing. I'm sure that there's not just one deal going on, but that there might be others. Now that said, that would be a great split test. Try focusing people on just one thing and then run another email where you have two things and see which one performs better. See what you learn. Let's jump into a few others here in the GoPro stack.

It looks like this one is around some of the things, some of the current cameras' features. Again, excellent product imagery. I like how they're using two types of light on this product shot. Whether this is an actual product shot or digitally rendered, it is attractive and makes for just a fantastic visual.

I love that they get clear with a big title. Image around like the new nine. Simple subheading. This simple subtext. Shop now. And then they repeat this. They have a secondary CTA here. I'm a little bit curious about why they switched to that. Instead of using the clear button, they change the imagery using a bit of an angle here, which I think is an excellent way to handle this.

You can see it's a PNG. It occupies the space of a rectangular image, but they get a little more action out of that by creating a diagonal here. I think that's interesting. They continue to use this same lockup for text. Really consistent. I like how they go top left, down right, top right, down left. They use a zigzag motion to move down through this email. I think it's working well. 

They end with another option to subscribe to GoPro and get 50% off, which is pretty cool—assuming that somebody's already subscribed to their email. I'm guessing that's like some other subscription, but not just a subscription to email, but some subscription service that they've got. 

Pretty on point in terms of this black that shows off the aesthetic of the GoPro. Over here on mobile, this looks great. I really shows off the photography really well. I think this gray on the outside is not as effective. If it were me, I would make that either a dark gray to still have a feeling of a column here in the primary email. Or I keep it black. It's such a high contrast that it just distracts from the email. What about you? 

Kelly Lamano: I agree. I would like to see a darker color, like black, because it takes away from the content. I like the zigzag and how they do put that focus, so it's clear on mobile. 

Matthew Smith: What do you think, from your experience Kelly, why are they doing this Secondary CTA as a text and not a button? What's your thinking there? 

Kelly Lamano: I think that with the button, that's more focused towards maybe people who are just being introduced to GoPro for the first time. Perhaps they haven't seen the product, or they haven't bought the product before. So that's just a bam right in the middle "shop now," like go and get it. 

Then as you scroll down, maybe more of like the more advanced GoPro user, they're more looking for accessories or something to compliment what they already have. Perhaps it's more of a softer, like you already know what's going on. Like, you know the deal, here's the place where you can shop now. So it's a softer CTA. 

Matthew Smith: You might be right. That's an interesting way to do it. Start people out with something focused and then slowly draw them down. If I were GoPro, I would test what effect you get if you make all of those the same color CTA and like an actual button. Or if you make this still secondary, but underline it or make it a little bit clearer it is a CTA. 

Even another thing that you could test would be changing up the text. So, "See the brand new Zeus mini" or "get the latest gear" or whatever the CTA is instead of just "shop now." See if any of those things drive sales. You never know how it'll end up affecting things, but it's cool to be able to see how those split tests work here. We've got another. They're talking about the eight.

Like the first one we saw, I think one of the things working well in this is this idea of leading with an image that shows a lot of the product's characteristics. Get in there with that intense color. Super simple title and subtitle, and then this dynamic CTA. Tt's powerful. It gets right in there. What do you think?

Kelly Lamano: I love that product shot again. It's bringing that product to life, bringing the camera to life, and seeing it really from top to bottom, back to front. It's a very simple email, but I think it gets the job done. It's just like, "Hey, here's a new product. Get yours." It's very inviting with that CTA.

Matthew Smith: Fantastic. I think this one is my favorite.

Kelly Lamano: This email is also a great example of brand recognition. So GoPro keeps it simple with really like maybe three to four colors at most what the yellow, black, blue, and white. I feel they do an excellent job of being consistent with that and switching it up in emails to use that color scheme. They're just using it in a different order.

Matthew Smith: I think you're right. One thing, though, I get a different color scheme here, a different color scheme here. I want to see something a little bit more consistent. I love the aesthetic of this, and I would love, and you know, another one here is this font. I'm pretty sure it's not being used here. Yep. So it's just an interesting difference. We could have grabbed these GoPro emails at different times. So these might be changes that they've made, but this is nice. It's great to see live text. I would love to see a little more consistency between these, but I know it can be challenging to do for a big brand.

So this is even a little bit different still again, another switch in the brand aesthetic. I like this aesthetic a lot, and I think this one has a bit more consistency between the two, probably because of the font. I think what they're doing here is interesting using live text. 

I like these highlighted words. But look at this CTA. It's a new CTA as well. I wonder maybe these are submissions from over some time. It's hard to say. What do you think about this layout? 

Kelly Lamano: The layout draws your eye from right to left, doing that zigzag effect. I liked that it highlights the different accessories. So the other emails are more focused on the camera. Here again, here are some items that can compliment that camera or some things that you can add to your kit when you're on the go. So I think they do a great job with that. The CTAs jump out to me.

What do you think about the copy inside the CTA? So they all say, "get it." Do you feel like that's effective, or do you feel like it might do a little bit better if it had a different word inside each button?

Matthew Smith: A couple of the things that I would probably change would be to get it all in one shot. You get these kits, here they are, and then a CTA. Then, I would let the travel kit and make this one of those secondary CTAs, the same here. As far as the language, I think you're right. Like, "get your travel on," "Start your adventure," "Go big with sports." Then where it says, "shop all accessories," I would show some kind of image with all the accessories or a bunch of accessories and then "shop all your accessories."

But right now, especially these two being so close, I find that it's a little bit CTA overwhelming, and it doesn't work quite as well. Mobile works a bit better because you've got this image sitting in between those. It's one of those balances. But overall, I think some strong things are happening here. And of course, the photography is fun and fantastic.

Well, thanks for walking through this, Ms. Kelly. I love it. Appreciate it. What are you going to be doing this weekend? 

Kelly Lamano: Well, this weekend, I'll probably just be hanging out on the couch. I will be watching Taylor Swift's folklore film. So, I'm excited about that. That'll be the highlight. How about you? 

Matthew Smith: Well, I'm going to spend some time with the kids and just trying to get some of that outdoor weather where it's safe from COVID, but not be cooped up inside. I am looking forward to that.

Email geeks, thanks for everything. Always. Please let us know what brands you'd like us to feature and to look at. Don't forget; you can submit your emails on reallygoodemails.com, and please subscribe to our channel and let others know about it. We want to keep improving, so let us know what you think. Thanks. Have a good one. 

Kelly Lamano: Bye. Happy Friday.